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AirFox Closes $6.5M ICO Pre-Sale

AirFox, a Boston, MA-based company making mobile data and internet more affordable, closed its $6.5m ICO pre-sale weeks earlier than scheduled.

The pre-sale was joined by a diverse audience including crypto investors, angel investors and other early backers of the project.

The company intends to use the ICO funds raised to further develop and launch its new blockchain consumer platform, AirToken (AIR), in order to tokenize mobile access by unlocking mobile capital from the smartphone for the underserved and underbanked prepaid mobile subscribers in emerging markets.

A TechStars portfolio company backed by Project 11, Launch Capital, and NXT Ventures, among others, AirFox aims to raise up to $15m in a token sale which will open at 10 a.m. ET on September 19, 2017.

Founded by ex-Googlers Victor Santos and Sara Choi in January 2016 and incubated at Harvard’s Innovation Lab, AirFox provides affordable data plans for US-based prepaid wireless carriers. With the launch of its ICO and new blockchain consumer platform, the company aims to enable unrestricted access to the internet for anyone with a prepaid smartphone. Its free Android apps, AirFox Browser and AirFox Recharge, enable users to earn AirTokens, a new cryptocurrency, by viewing advertisements on their devices, completing offers, and browsing the internet.
AirTokens are redeemable for mobile data or used to send mobile data to others via 5 billion prepaid SIM cards and over 500 wireless carriers.

The company will use the ICO funds to develop a microloans program that enables peer-to-peer lending in AirTokens at more affordable rates and expand abroad to emerging markets. The AirToken micro finance system will allow peer-to-peer lending in Air-Tokens at more affordable rates using the mobile data and airtime ecosystems that already exist in these markets. By analyzing thousands of data points on mobile behavior, device data, payments and browsing history, the company will use proprietary algorithms to assign credit rankings to users. Using these credit scores, AirFox will segment users into tranches, allowing lenders to provide microloans in AirTokens through an Ethereum smart-contract.